


Every Good Intention

by could-be-calliope (206265)



Series: Sasha deserves better [1]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Rated mature for body horror, i dunno folks theres just something to be said for feeling worthy of protection, the maiden-in-a-tower model of empowerment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-11
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:08:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23600596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/206265/pseuds/could-be-calliope
Summary: Zolf wakes up half-drowning with a copper tube down his throat, his peg leg missing, and his good leg amputated just above the knee.  He doesn't know it yet, but none of these will be the worst thing he encounters that day.
Relationships: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Sasha Rackett & Zolf Smith, Sasha Rackett & Zolf Smith
Series: Sasha deserves better [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2174340
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	Every Good Intention

**Author's Note:**

> Alright folks, I'm very aware that this fic will not be everyone's cup of tea. Writing it brought me a lot of catharsis and I hope it'll do the same for someone else out there, but please read with care!
> 
> Warnings: Body horror, distress, internalized ableism, uncomfortable intersections of agency and gender (see the end notes)
> 
> (Title from Constellations by The Oh Hellos)

Zolf wakes up half-drowning with a copper tube down his throat, his peg leg missing, and his good leg amputated just above the knee. He doesn't know it yet, but none of these will be the worst thing he encounters that day.

The drowning is dealt with first, reduced in urgency by the agonizing thirty seconds Zolf spends orienting himself in the confines of the narrow tank he’s floating in. In all that time, he comes to the conclusion that he is not, in fact, running out of air. The tube running down his throat seems to be staving off death by lack of oxygen, but he bites down on it all the same. Struggling to gain purchase against the smooth walls of the tank, Zolf manages to wriggle upward until his head breaks the surface. One arm ends up painfully abraded in the process, but he finally has a free hand and access to air.

The copper tube is next to go, and while he feels it carve shallow scratches into his throat on the way out, he manages to remove it quickly enough. It leaves behind a distinctive coppery taste in his mouth, but he doesn’t gag, squeezing his eyes closed and forcing down the instinctive panic. It is now, as he floats in his water tank, shaking with adrenaline and painfully aware of his vulnerability, that he can finally examine his surroundings.

Zolf sees a large, clinically clean lab, filled with a series of metal tables arrayed in neat lines. This is about as far as he gets before he catches a glimpse of Sasha.

Sasha is laid out on one of the tables, but it takes Zolf a second to even recognize her, in her state. She is missing many of the hallmarks of the woman who has worked with him for the past several months, from the oversized leather coat she wears like a second skin to the majority of her internal organs. The former is nowhere to be seen, but the latter are suspended above her still form in glass tanks, linked to her body by the same kind of copper tubing Zolf is so familiar with. There is shockingly little blood, considering the gaping wound slicing down her torso from throat to just below her navel. That absence makes the clean edges of the wound even more evident. This was done methodically, but Zolf cannot think of a single medical reason for leaving her in this state.

That dichotomy echoes in Zolf’s mind as he heaves himself out of his tank and falls ungracefully to the floor. He lands on the point of one shoulder, sending pain lancing through that entire side of his body, but he keeps his mouth shut. Clutching at his shoulder and biting back profanity, Zolf spares a glance for the space where his good leg used to be. There is a socket on the end of the fresh stump, surrounded by the familiar knotted scarring he knows from the leg he lost years ago. There is a matching socket fitted to the old stump. And Zolf is out of time to worry about that now, because he knows what his priorities need to be, and Sasha has all of her organs on the outside. He drags himself toward her, focusing on the burn of indignity and annoyance. If he can be annoyed by his sudden lack of both trousers and legs to put them on, he can avoid thinking about the fact that Sasha is almost certainly dead.

After several agonizing seconds, Zolf manages to seat himself at the base of the table, and he can no longer see Sasha. Straining upward, he spots a pair of buttons with arrows outlined on them and fumbles for the one marked "Down". Sasha's table lowers gradually with a dull mechanical hum, and now Zolf's worry has sharpened into a new kind of horror, because by the Gods, she's _alive_. Her chest does not rise and fall, but he can see her lungs expanding in their chamber, just as he sees her heart beating steadily in another. Her hollow body is a sight little better, with ribcage cracked open to accommodate the many tubes and feed lines, with symmetrical flaps of skin peeled back and staked down on the table where she lays. It could be an autopsy, if not for the constant flickers of movement.

Zolf has seen corpses shown more respect, and that thought brings horrifying clarity amidst the panic rising in his chest, choking– He has seen corpses better treated, and Sasha has survived this, somehow, and he needs to fix it. He needs to fix Sasha, and he clings to that thought like a drowning man. He will not succumb now, because he must put Sasha back together.

And so Zolf gets to work. He opens each glass container in its turn, carefully removing and placing the contents on the table. The monotony of the task stands in sharp contrast to the twisting, sick feeling that won’t seem to leave his stomach. Still, this is far from the first time he’s performed a surgery, and thankfully his hands don't shake overmuch. The panic comes in waves, though, and every so often it surges up his throat and threatens to overwhelm him entirely. He beats it back viciously, praying that he’ll at least last until Sasha is okay again.

Finally, each of Sasha’s organs are laying on the table, and Zolf is staring down at the empty places where they should be, where the tubes have been plugged in to her. He only hesitates for a second before nudging aside one half of her split ribcage and reaching in to pull the first tube out, then another, then another. By the time Sasha’s body is at last free of those copper lines and whatever they were pumping into her, she has begun to shake slightly, and Zolf knows he needs to work quickly. He picks up her lungs first, one in each hand, and shudders at the meaty weight of them before replacing them gently in her chest. Sending his mind back to the basics of anatomy he learned so many years ago, Zolf shuts his eyes in concentration and reaches out to Poseidon. _Help her, save her, heal her_ , and a pulse of energy radiates from his hands. Cartilage crunches as Sasha’s trachea reforms under his gaze, and Zolf shakes off the nausea as he realizes that Sasha is breathing. It isn’t much, but the sound is the reassurance he sorely needs. And so he presses on.

It’s surprisingly straight-forward, he finds, putting her back together. When the fear rises too high for him to control and his hands begin to shake, he just turns his focus to her breathing, slow and calm as if she were merely asleep. Every so often he mumbles a desperate prayer that she won’t wake up like this, please not like this, but as he finishes putting the last organs back, Zolf decides that it really could be worse.

It rapidly becomes worse when Zolf pushes the two halves of Sasha’s ribcage together and seals them in place with an awful crunch. A pained whimper escapes her, and Zolf’s heart does something he doesn’t like. Working faster now, Zolf smooths down the skin that had been cut away, fixing it in place with another pulse of healing. He takes a moment to review his work, glancing down the length of the fresh scar bisecting Sasha’s torso and deeming it a satisfactory healing job, then checks over his shoulder. The lab is still and quiet, so Zolf blows out a careful breath and lays his hand over Sasha’s mouth.

“Sasha,” he hisses, settling his other hand on her shoulder and shaking her slightly, “wake up.”

Zolf watches closely as Sasha’s eyelids begin to flicker, her breathing accelerating to a worrying tempo. And this is when she begins to cry. It’s perfectly silent but for the hitched breaths that wheeze slightly through her nose, and Zolf has never seen Sasha cry before. It settles dread in the pit of his stomach, perhaps even moreso than the sight of her laid out in the first place. He yanks his hands back, leaving behind bloody prints.

“Come on,” Zolf manages, trying very hard to keep his voice appropriately soft, considering that whoever did this to her might be nearby, and may be inclined to do it again. “You have to wake up, _please_.”

Sasha’s lips are moving now, but no sound escapes. She begins shaking her head, just a little, and her hands rise to cover her mouth. Her eyes still haven’t opened, and tears streak down the sides of her face.

After a helpless instant where he can do nothing more than stare in horror, Zolf comes to the abrupt conclusion that he is absolutely not qualified to deal with this. Grasping for a solution, he twists to look around the lab for something, anything, and feels a spike of guilt when he sees Hamid laying on a table across the room, unnoticed until now. The halfling seems to be sleeping peacefully enough, and although the wound on his arm has re-opened, he's missing nothing more than his shirt. Zolf cannot avoid noticing how, in comparison to Sasha’s and his own, Hamid’s skin speaks of a far kinder life lived. Maybe Hamid will be capable of the sort of gentleness that people like Zolf can’t achieve.

Gritting his teeth, Zolf drags himself over to Hamid’s table and lowers it. This time, he considers his task for a moment, knowing that he can’t afford to lose Hamid to the panicked state that has claimed Sasha. He suspects that Hamid won’t be in as bad a shape, but it can’t hurt to be cautious. Zolf takes Hamid’s hand and concentrates, radiating a small amount of healing energy and hoping it’s enough. It very much is, and Hamid blinks awake slowly as his arm heals for a second time, then shoots upright with a half-stifled yelp. Zolf shushes him urgently, and the confusion in Hamid’s eyes rapidly matures into panic.

“Right, Hamid, listen,” Zolf says rapidly, squeezing Hamid’s hand and trying to keep his focus. “Sasha’s in a bad way and I need your help. Alright?”

Intellect visibly wars with fear in Hamid’s wide eyes until his gaze sharpens and he takes a single slow breath. Then he nods, once, and his spine straightens.

“Sasha?”

Zolf points blindly over his shoulder to where Sasha lays. He can hear her mumbling quietly to herself, which has to be a deterioration in her state. Hamid’s eyes dart toward her, and he stiffens at the sight. Zolf pictures the scars, the gore covering her torso where his own efforts prioritized speed over cleanliness. He knows how Hamid feels.

“Okay,” Hamid says softly, and his voice is very small. Then he moves to stand and glances down at his bare chest, and squeaks slightly. His hands begin fluttering nervously, like he isn’t sure what to do with them. “Um, my clothes–”

“Taken by whoever did this to us,” Zolf tries to sound reassuring, tries to avoid denting Hamid’s fragile resolve. “We’ll find them later, okay? Sasha first.”

“Right, okay.” In a motion so smooth that Zolf can’t help but envy it, Hamid hops down from the table and trots over to Sasha. By the time Zolf has dragged himself over, Hamid’s face is ashen and he looks horribly uncertain.

“What happened? How…”

“I just woke her up,” Zolf says, leaving out several minutes of important context but thoroughly unwilling to discuss that now. “That’s it.” Guilt surges up, because this kind of hurt doesn’t happen in a vacuum and he knows he’s at least partially responsible. He steadfastly refuses to speculate on whatever else may have contributed to Sasha’s state.

“Sasha?” Hamid lays a tentative hand on her shoulder, one of the few places clean of blood. She doesn’t react. “Come on, Sasha, we have to _go_.”

Zolf watches with increasing worry as Hamid fails to break through to Sasha. The pitch of Hamid’s voice is creeping upward further and further as Sasha remains unresponsive, and Zolf bites back the urge to tell him to keep quiet. There are no other options; Zolf knows that he’ll need Sasha’s help to move any distance and with Sasha incapacitated, he’s stranded. Hamid could get out, but excluding the slim possibility that he can talk someone far larger than himself into helping, that won’t do any of them much good.

“Um, Zolf?”

Zolf jolts back into the present and turns to see Hamid frozen with one small palm pressed to Sasha’s cheek. Sasha’s eyes are open, glassy, and fixed on Hamid. Zolf leans in slightly, an instinct he can’t quite suppress, and Sasha’s gaze snaps to him. Recognition flares, but brings no relief with it. Instead, her eyes track downward. Bile rises in Zolf’s throat as he follows her gaze to the fresh scar slicing down her torso and the smears of drying blood painted across her skin. His hands are stained a matching shade of red, and he can't fault her for the betrayal that flickers across her face. Sasha makes a noise like she’s been punched in the gut and closes her eyes again.

“Right, new plan,” Zolf says lowly, grabbing Hamid by the arm and shaking him, just enough to tear his attention away from Sasha. “Get something for her to wear, a shirt, a blanket, something. Sasha first, but if you find anything for us, grab it too. Understand?”

Hamid nods frantically, looking on the brink of tears himself, and Zolf squeezes his arm in a manner he hopes will feel reassuring. Then he gives Hamid a light shove and watches him move off toward the cabinets at the other side of the room, picking up speed as he goes. That taken care of, Zolf returns his attention to Sasha.

“Okay,” Zolf says to himself, and his urge to provide some kind of help wars with the knowledge that Sasha really won’t welcome his presence right now. He compromises and stays where he is, a safe distance away.

“You’ll be okay,” he tries, feeling strange when she doesn’t respond. He doesn’t know what he expected. “Me and Hamid, we’ll help you, you’ll see.” Sasha keeps quiet, and Zolf lets out a steadying breath. He shuts his eyes for a moment, grasping for some level of calm.

“Zolf,” and he looks up to see Hamid standing before him with a bundle of fabric clutched in his arms, “I wasn’t really able to get anything good.”

“Got something for her?” Hamid nods, beginning to rifle through the bundle in his arms. Zolf stills him with a gesture. “Right, good. Anything for us?”

Hamid hesitates, hugging the clothing to his chest protectively and Zolf growls as his frustration overflows.

“We don’t have time for this! Give me the damn clothes, and get yourself dressed _before_ you help her. Okay?”

Not meeting Zolf’s eyes, Hamid holds out a pair of dwarven-sized trousers and a baggy tunic. Zolf snatches them with a grunt and keeps his eyes on the ground as he struggles to dress, sorely missing his legs. With the momentary flash of anger fading, Zolf is faintly aware that he’s being too hard on Hamid. He knows first hand how difficult it is to focus when a friend is hurt and scared nearby. But they’re still in the den of whoever did this to them, and there’s no time for these mistakes. Still, Zolf nods his thanks to Hamid, who is dressed in a ludicrously oversized shirt and is nervously shifting his weight from one leg to the other. A thin sheet has been draped over Sasha, but she hasn’t stopped shaking, it clearly isn’t enough. Hamid has a tunic bunched in one hand and a helpless air about him.

“Fine,” Zolf mutters, and pulls himself over to the pair of them. “Get her attention first,” he orders Hamid, keeping his voice low.

Hamid only hesitates for a moment before brushing gentle fingers against Sasha’s cheek. Immediately, she jerks and her eyes flash open. At first, she only looks afraid, but it quickly vanishes beneath dull anger as she looks between the two of them. Taking a deep breath, Hamid leans forward until her attention is entirely on him.

“I’ve found a shirt and I’d like to help you put it on, please, if that’s okay,” Hamid says in that careful voice he only uses when he’s scared. “I think you’ll feel better if you’ve got some clothes on.”

The words seem to register, judging by the flicker in Sasha’s eyes. Keeping a cautious eye on them, she pushes herself upright on shaking arms and hunches forward, the fresh scars on her torso warping. Looking increasingly tense, she stretches a hand out toward Hamid for the tunic. Hamid passes it over, Sasha begins tugging it over her head, and Zolf finally lets some of his worry drain away. Sasha will be ready to go in a minute or two, Zolf guesses, as he looks around the lab for a way out, something.

A frightened cry pierces the quiet, and Zolf's attention snaps back to the two of them. Hamid is clutching at his face, staggering backward, and Sasha is already a good few metres away, crouching, every sinew pulled taut as she shakes violently and glares daggers at them both.

"You alright, Hamid?"

Hamid nods, swallowing thickly as he swipes at his bloody nose, and Zolf is already moving toward Sasha, knowing he looks ridiculous as he shuffles along the floor and thoroughly unconcerned by that fact.

"Sasha–"

Sasha growls, a sound he didn't know she was capable of making, and flings out a trembling hand in his direction. "Stay back," she snaps, her eyes wild with something halfway between terror and hatred.

Zolf freezes. He doesn't know how to help her, this is so far beyond his pay grade, and panic is snapping at his heels as he settles on the floor.

"Sasha, do you remember us?" Hamid's voice is thin and nasal from the blood, coming from just over Zolf's shoulder.

"I remember you taking me apart," Sasha snarls, and _oh_. She's looking directly at Zolf, and he feels a bit like he's been struck. "You, touching, and– and– and–"

"I'm Hamid, and that's Zolf," Hamid cuts off her stuttered accusations, gesturing first to himself and then to Zolf. "We work with you, Sasha."

Sasha makes a noise that might be a whimper, and her hand twitches slightly. "Barett, 'course it's Barett," she mumbles, and now the anger has bled away, leaving only misery.

"No," Zolf says, so sharply he surprises himself. He didn't intend on speaking, not after Sasha's previous accusation, but now she's looking at him with suspicion in her eyes and he thinks he has no other choice. "We don't work for Barett."

Sasha scoffs, one hand subtly brushing over all the places where Zolf knows she usually keeps her knives. She comes up empty, and her eyes flash wide for an instant before she chokes down the fear.

"Zolf, I've got, um–" Zolf turns to see Hamid crouched at his side, holding out a knife, no, a scalpel. "For her, maybe?"

It's small but wickedly sharp, and Zolf knows how much damage it could do in the hands of an expert like Sasha. He wonders briefly if arming someone in a panic is a bad call, but pushes the uncertainty away and takes the blade from Hamid.

"Sasha, do you want a knife?" Her head snaps up, and her eyes lock onto the small blade immediately. "Can I give it to you?"

She considers for a moment, then nods once. The instant he shifts nearer, she rolls onto her feet, combat-ready. He can't fault her for that, but he lets the knife sit on his open palm, teetering unsteadily as he moves. He expects she'll notice that he has no expertise with blades of this size.

The closer he draws, the more tense Sasha looks, and the tighter Zolf's chest becomes. Deliberately, he lowers his gaze to the floor as he stops in front of her, an arm's length away.

"Please don't stab me," he mutters as he blindly extends his arm, trying not to think about how easily Sasha could incapacitate him. She doesn't like to be seen at the best of times, it's the least he can do now, even if the vulnerability makes his heart thump faster with every second that ticks by.

The knife leaves his palm with a brush of trembling fingers, and the sharp pain he's been bracing for doesn't come. He backs off before looking up to find Sasha curled around the knife, clutching it like a lifeline.

"Whoever hurt you might still be here," Zolf tells her, trying to smooth out the worried edges of his voice so it sounds less like a threat. "Take a minute, then we'll leave. Okay?"

Sasha stares at her newly-acquired knife for a long moment, turning it over and over in her hands with practiced ease, before nodding slowly. Zolf nods back and turns away, and only then does he acknowledge the prickling sensation behind his eyes and the grief lodged in his chest.

Zolf hears a hitched breath from in front of him, not behind, and he looks up to see Hamid, standing a respectful distance away with his hands firmly pressed to his mouth and tears running down his cheeks. Bitter frustration lances through Zolf, because isn't it just like Hamid to fall apart now, when he's the only one among them to emerge largely unharmed from this, but regret follows close on the coattails of that uncharitable thought. He can spare a moment for Hamid, Sasha will certainly welcome the solitude.

“S’alright, Hamid,” Zolf begins, unsure how to articulate what he wants to say. “You don’t have to… it’s not your fault, right? You didn’t do this.”

Hamid sniffles, wiping his eyes on a sleeve and leaving smears of eyeliner on both. He frowns, his throat working as he seems to search for words. Zolf waits a second longer, but Hamid doesn’t find them and fresh tears fall. At the sight, Zolf can’t stifle a sigh, and when Hamid crumples inward, it feels inevitable to stretch a hand out toward him, beckoning. Hamid doesn’t see.

“C’mere,” Zolf mutters, as if keeping his voice low will diminish the awkwardness. Still, Hamid glances up at him and takes the several quick steps required to settle Zolf’s hand on his shoulder. Zolf decides, abruptly, that he won’t manage a smile for Hamid, but he squeezes his shoulder perhaps tighter than he should. Hamid doesn’t seem to mind, so Zolf doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t pull away for a long while.

"Uh, boss?" A raspy voice comes from behind Zolf, and he jumps, turning around as quickly as he can. Sasha is standing now, watching him with her usual sharpness and spinning the scalpel idly in one hand.

"Sasha!” Hamid lists toward her, arms outstretched for an embrace he rapidly realizes is a bad idea. Folding his arms, he instead smiles shakily at her and glances to Zolf, looking uncertain.

"Are you okay?" Zolf asks simply, because if he says anything more his voice might break, and he needs to keep it together for his team.

Sasha shrugs, her usual impassivity clashing sharply with her bloodshot eyes. "Fine." The scalpel twirls faster between her fingers.

"Right." Zolf fights down a peculiar urge to get closer to her, he's not _Hamid_ , he doesn't need proximity to the people he works with. "Well, uh, good to have you back."

"Yeah," Sasha mutters, and gestures vaguely at the room. "Thanks for, uh, yeah. The healing. I know that, um, you're not… not like Barett."

'Not like Barett' could imply a lot of things, each worse than the last, but Zolf decides not to think about those now. They don't have time, and besides, Sasha isn't the type to appreciate earnest promises of safety. Sometimes he wishes she were.

"It's nothing," Zolf says instead, and his voice comes out gruff and a bit strangled. "Um, happy to help."

Before Zolf can stumble through any more uncomfortable platitudes, he hears a dull metallic thud. It comes from somewhere behind him, at the very edge of his hearing, and the urgency he seemed to have forgotten appears in his chest so quickly he gasps.

"Right, we need to go," Zolf says, and Sasha's eyes are fixed on the door behind them, she must have noticed it too. “I can use this–” and he conjures a floating disk. It takes him far too long to struggle onto it, but it continues to hover a few feet off the ground as he does. “This won’t move on its own, Hamid-”

Appearing at his side with unsettling speed, Sasha beats Hamid to the task and digs her hands into the side of the magical disk, knuckles going white. She gives it an experimental shove and Zolf clutches frantically at the thing to avoid toppling off the edge as it floats forward a few paces.

“Gods, Sasha,” Zolf manages through gritted teeth as he clings to the disk with considerably more desperation. “Warn me first.”

Sasha shoots him a look that might contain the barest hint of amusement. Then she redoubles her grip and begins pushing the disk toward the nearest door. Zolf twists awkwardly to look behind them, and finds Hamid, trotting to keep up and unobtrusively prestidigitating away all evidence of his tears.

As the three of them near the exit, the thud they heard earlier echoes through the room. Then again, then again, and Sasha freezes, bringing Zolf along with her. Thud, behind one of the doors now, thud, and a voice can just barely be heard. A voice with a familiar posh accent. And the door swings open.

“Ah, Mr. Smith!” Bertie cries, jovial as always. “I see you’ve lost weight!”

Hamid shrieks at the sight of him, Sasha scowls, and Zolf sighs as he files away the sorrow in his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warnings:  
> Body horror - Zolf and Sasha's medical states upon waking up in Mr. Ceiling's lab are described in detail, as is the process of Sasha's healing.
> 
> Distress - All three party members are disoriented and panicked when they first awaken. Due to being temporarily dead, Sasha is the most distressed, and it takes her several minutes to recall who Zolf and Hamid are.
> 
> Internalized ableism - Zolf's reaction to learning that his leg has been amputated speaks to internalized ableism.
> 
> Other? - As a consequence of Sasha's death and subsequent surgical resurrection, she is in a very bad state and is effectively incapacitated for the first half of this fic. It is also mentioned that she, like the rest of the party, has had her shirt removed for the surgery performed on her torso. This is only mentioned briefly.
> 
> ~
> 
> I have a lot of thoughts about body horror as a vehicle for the trauma of womanhood etc, and I'm also really glad that canon didn't engage with these themes. I, also, wouldn't have publicly engaged with these themes if I had an audience any larger than just posting things on this site. (I am very aware that authors removing a female character's agency in order to treat them as a prop for the narrative is a major issue in a lot of media.) That being said, writing the psychological repercussions of non-consensual major surgery was important to me.


End file.
